they say, a rose is a rose is a rose, or a rose by any other name still is a rose. either by gertrude or as in the name of the rose by umberto...you go and defend that, even in a platonic way. then visit portland and take a look at the rose garden there. even though for a town known as "rose city", this garden is absurd. i suppose the garden is supported by the rose growers of america, whoever they are: the american garden rose selections (AGRS) which has been replaced by the all american rose selections (AARS). what does it all mean? basically that almost all roses exhibited in portland are some form of hybrids. or hybrids of hybrids in sizes from thumbnails to soup plates. real old roses, the canina, or a damascena, even for instance the honorine de brabant, an exquisite old bourbon rose, those are virtually not represented. still, the garden is a rose spectacular, a color extravaganza. they come in any color you might wish for, really, any shade, any mix, the darkest and deepest red, though not black, which isn't a color anyways. especially in june, but even now in the heat of mid august the roses are in excellent bloom and each bush tenderly cared for by ladies, volunteers in their own, if of later bloom, and they snip and deadhead until all looks tidy and yes, there will even bemore blooms they say, certainly many more, until late, way into november.

haven't done these in a while, not as blog at any rate. some images, how to progress and how to serve.before i make these i prepare a broth. seven large oxtails (1) fit one of my stovetop pots. i roast them on both sides. once they are nicely browned, i add water to cover, bring the liquid to a boil, then turn down the heat to a gentle simmer. for about seven hours, adding more water to keep the the oxtails submerged. i do this in the morning, so that i have my broth ready when my dumplings are. take the oxtails from the broth and set them aside until they have cooled. remove meat (2) from the bones and set aside. freeze bones for later use.clarify the broth (3) to remove fat and various stuff. flavor the broth to your taste. keep on a light simmer until ready to use.as in the image: place a lump of prepared meat (4) in the center of a won-ton wrapper (5) brush the edges with egg yolk (6) fold won-ton into shape. set aside.cook a few won-ton at a time in boiling salt water for two minutes, then place all into simmering broth for a few minutes until ready to serve. add chives.1 oxtails: a chinese market or your butcher. oxtail is cut into five to seven rounds, about three pounds.2 scrape meat from each oxtail, set aside or freeze for later use3 clarify broth: http://www.bhg.com/recipes/how-to/cooking-basics/how-to-clarify-stock/4 prepared meat (or other filling) in a cuisinart grind together equal parts of beef, pork, parsley. add two egg yolk and spicing to taste. combine and freeze for later use.5 won-ton wrappers: chinese market6 folding the wrapper over the filling: brush won-ton edges with egg yolk. place a small lump center and fold wrapper in half to form a triangular pocket. pinch the triangle sides together to form the won-ton.

this guy used to live in the cottage up the drive suddenly moved out. was our neighbor and we asked him for dinner after we’d moved in, downhill from him, next door. dinner was awkward, all he talked about was shopping for discount foods at save a lot. he'd buy food out of date, cans or frozens, he said it was cheaper that way, and just as tasty. we felt weird. we selected our food with great care, read ingredient labels and shopped at whole foods or city market, places diagonally opposite to save a lot, likely better known as spend a lot. once i saw him standing at new seasons, in the rapid check line, his cart way full. people were grumbling, he paid with stamps. we had made a sumptuous meal, fresh tomato salad, garden like. with the green thick, extra etc. olive oil and buffalo mozzarella, veal scaloppini in heavy cream, deep fried dover sole, no mrs. paul’s in this kitchen. two kinds of wine and a small plum tart mit schlag for dessert. he didn't drink and couldn't have butter, nor cream, let alone sugar. We should have had spaghetti and meatballs instead. after that we almost never saw him again, which was just as well. he frowned at my small garden when he walked by with the rent check.

we'd only seen the little house where he lived from the outside, as we passed by his driveway. i got a glimpse inside once, when i knocked at the door to hand him mail had come to our box by mistake. he opened the door wide enough to stick his nose out, then reached through the crack. all i could see at that instant was a dark inside, an outline of a shadowy staircase, when he shut the door in my face, no word for my trouble. late in september i saw him in passing. he sat bent over on a plastic lawn chair clipping his toenails. past him a door, wide to a murky inside, a flickering tv, no sound.

when he was gone we walked over to see what the place might look like inside. i can't say we were surprised. let me tell you, ramshackle would be too rich to describe a decrepit interior. the bedroom upstairs had a dank mattress flopped sideways off a bare box spring. in the bath the faucet dripped onto a blue stain in the tub, the sink rusty, a bleary clear lightbulb still gleaming. the mirror of the cabinet half blind, its door left ajar. on a glass shelf a puckered tube of crest and two scuzzy tubs of old drug remedies with blistering labels. out in the hallway a broom leaned against the wall where the window missed a triangular crack, shards on the floor. why bother look further, the place was a gross mess, ground mud leading upstairs, floorboards moaning, some wanting altogether. d-con trays in corners, long tailed shadows hustling off like dark ghosts. the cottage had the smell of decayed time, of a place way too late late in wait for a remodel.

yet he had lived there with this woman. she had shown suddenly, but no one was certain from where. someone thought her canadian. while he watched daytime tv, she'd lie fair in the meadow up the hill, sunning herself. i saw her one late afternoon sprawled on a mat in the tall shadowy grass. there she was, bareback, chin propped on elbows, reading. she glanced over indifferently as i passed by to pick plums from a tree further up the yard. and was gone when i ambled back.

of all things i couldn't imagine a woman would live in a place like that, not for a minute, no way in the dark, overnight. yet as fall went she had prevailed, even thrived. they occasionally drove to town in an old cream colored saab and she waved as our cars passed on the narrow road. he never so much as raised a hand in salute. when they moved, the saab was loaded up and over the top, boxes and bags and duffels inside, with nearly no room for a driver. on the rickety roof rack balanced a rocking chair and a small cabinet tied down with bungee cords. she carried weak bags of late trash to our bin. i sat up by my window, writing, looking out daydreaming, concocting this story, when i saw her coming back up the path. she turned swiftly into the driveway, walking the way a cat might, vigilantly. she must have felt watched. her head stayed low until she just passed from my view. then she turned, suddenly, glancing up, but averted her eyes just as quick, knowing she'd been seen.

next we heard the landlady wanted to put money into a renovation. on the cheap of course and amateurish, a hack electrician, named john, looping grey conduit stapled coarsely to old beams overhead. this guy was an all round handyman. he cleaned rat shit from the upstairs, replaced cracked windows and nailed floor boards flush. he apparently did most all of the work himself to make the place livable again. he fixed the old wood stove to code, and installed a chimney cap, plugged and plastered various holes to keep wildlife at bay. he hauled a carpet to cover coarse floorboards in the bedroom upstairs, painted the ceiling a sallow white, the front door dark green. he straightened the stairs and leveled the floor in the hall. he said they would install a new electric stove. new cabinets, a stainless new sink for the kitchen, granite to top the counters. one morning the roofers came and newly shingled the roof, done by late afternoon. the main room downstairs was dark. it opened to a pretty pergola leading outside. john tore down yards of ivy and vines covering that old gazebo to allow some new light ambling into the downstairs.

just outside that arbor rose a very tall pine tree. on a sunny day you could just see its top branches. four grown men, arms extended, nearly grasped its girth. it was majestic, splendid even, i saw an eagle descend to perch at its height, had flown from the river and scared a parcel of crows into cawing, squawking and dive bombing, the bird could care less. this was his noble tree, lofty no doubt. though it seemed to plumb a wee to the west, its pitch was no tilt at all. having it razed for this minute cant would be murder. yet during many months of arguing, the tree had become simply too old. too tall. too worrisome. and it was leaning badly. if in a storm its trunk surely would reach the roof of the cottage. the dispute and the pestering, and whose responsibility it really was should it topple and fall. it all came to an end, when lavinia, the land owner, caved in and abandoned her notion of saving the tree. all she wanted to do was drive out to the stable, sit on her horse, go riding and be left in peace. still she wasn’t convinced. but she was tired, and like the tree, very old and oh so weary of such nonsense dispute. her son fixed flats on a good day, he said he could see plainly the tree was leaning and in a dangerous way. should it topple, it would surely crush the roof and destroy the house which likely was his came an inheritance. the middle daughter, a medical accountant, lived in a gated community with flowering shrubs out in the suburbs and hated all trees. they were a nuisance and a worry everywhere. they didn’t ever hardly even flower and even when they did, their blossom made a giant mess on the sidewalk. she was worried, now that her boy child was to live in the newly restored cottage. the tree simply had to come down. still for a while lavinia held on. she pointed out that the pine was already tall when she was a child and had withstood many a ferocious storm since, almost never losing so much as a branch. besides, it was part of the old growth forest. and for this alone at least two hundred years old and no doubt illegal to cut down, in this county at least. but the middle daughter kept nagging and became truly more and more riled now that the tree might pitch and hurtle some virulent night. and most likely kill her boy in his sleep, certainly destroy the newly refurbished cabin. and so lavinia had become tired of the endless bickering and gave in to their reasons. didn’t they have every right to worry, especially since the roofers had finished the shingling for which she paid more than plenty, and wasn’t planning to pay more any time soon.

one morning i woke to the whirr and buzz of a chainsaw. craning my neck, i saw the tiny silhouette of a man way up the top with an enormous saw cutting into the crown of the tree. like at the barber’s, when she trims your fringe, down sailed small branchlets, boughs off the tip at first, followed by limbs from the crown and as he worked his powerful saw, larger and larger wings sailed to the ground. by noon what was once a royal fir had become a mere stump. alas, still raised some fifty feet tall a capricious finger accusing the sky, hardly resembling a once patrician timber. but turned into timber it was, in a mere matter of hours. years later it might become firewood, if well stacked. the lumber men had sliced the tree into rolls. and there they sat, all of them, some fallen over, some leaning against each other, five feet at the base, a foot and a half wide each. slabs now, about forty in all, defeated by weeds in no time. the half ragged stump five and a half feet wide as it now lumbers two feet above ground. i counted the rings at the cut, an indication of age and of those various oregon weather years, some wider than others, but by my count a rough one hundred and ninety. so i sat and i thought. if at least they would have managed to turn timber to lumber. like stacks of board slab orderly curing, giving a possible future use of the wood as well as retaining the spirit of what had been just yesterday a royal old giant. but what can you say, or for that matter do? we are renters here, as they call us, and merely that. not that we really care. by now it’s been years since we’ve lived here. my own garden is mine only on account of those monthly checks. my collection of plants is grown in containers, some tiny, some large. my little trees, as i call them, are by now quite a large collection of japanese maples, various conifers, a true yakusugi (though still only a tiny kosugi), as well as some cultivars of the weeping katsura tree. if ever we’d have to leave i could pack them all up and move on. i’ve done it before.

but as i sat in my garden i thought of one particular tree in my collection. this, a young giant sequoia now only three feet tall, would grow perfectly well in oregon’s climate. hence live some five hundred years, certainly outlasting me. and all of them. if i gave it a good space on their property, it could easily top some two hundred feet in this present universe. it might even grow in the spirit of the old giant. time alone would be the factor. most of the trees still standing are wistful old chestnuts, oaks and maples. the fat purple beach out back is certainly well past its centennial. like most of the others it was never much cared for, allowed to grow any which way. hence the tree has begun to branch widow makers. all of these woods will hold their own for a while, though unlikely too much into the yonder. while the present generation of venerable owners ride the big steeplechase, their offspring likely has betters to do than to carry on with these grounds or the old house. they’d pursue cash. it might then become true that all of this beautiful land would be razed for newly developed mansions serving some future generation. in my dream though, it just might be declared off limits via a trust, a conservation of space to outlast the ever increasing demand for novel advance. my giant sequoia would then be the sovereign monarch holding sway over chestnuts, maples and oaks. and possibly bearing a small clearing for my now still tiny weeping katsura.

he always sat way in the back of the car, in a tiny space above the engine, back of the soft leather seats, in a spot really designed for a single suitcase alone.

there were times they went to parties. lacking a sitter, they settled him into this nook and drove around until the engine had warmed. the cozy rumble of the motor had him asleep in no time. they parked, partied and he slept. they returned late, drove home and carried him up to his room. he never knew, but for their tales.

on road trips he climbed back there, feet drawn, knees bent, the bunk just wide enough to fit. the mottled carpet felt rough and scratchy on his legs. he lay there and looked up through the low sloping window and watched as clouds turned into high flying dragons. often he imagined them as wispy lily maidens, garlanded, rising from trembling lakes, beckoning. he was fully prepared to heed their call. he had keenly studied dark drawings of them in a picture book of fables from the black forest. the book had smelled musty, like a fog shrouded lake where neptune rose to watch the dance of his daughters.

heat from the engine, the rev of the loud motor soon had him in a dream, slouched in a pearl shell chariot, next to salacia, neptune's alluring queen. he raised the god's trident in triumph, savage sea horses driving the skiff madly, ardent dolphins riding apace.

the clatter of rain woke him, drubbing the sleek roof above. beads of the downpour trilled past his window, slithering in the airstream chasing the car. a fly buzzed in a corner above him against the smooth glass, where the porsche badge had begun to blister and peel. he reached up and the fly, as flies do, clambered to another corner, then bumbled down, started anew and began walking upside down, why did it not fall, he thought: was it its suction cups? he pushed on one of the triangular side windows. they were pop-outs, you turned a knob and the window hinged out with a snapping sound. now he had fresh air. the nosy fly ambled over and was gone. sucked out, drawn by the draught. rain had come as sudden as the return now of blue sky.

they were on the way to a vacation in the small village of his aunt. he loved spending his summers there, away from the city, in what seemed an endless terrain, the dark woods, the deep meadows, the small brook, where he could sail his boat. he had built it himself, but his aunt sewed the sails. a small push brought the boat past weeds out into the main of the creek, where a curling eddie made it keel over, float sideways and finally sink. he loved riding a bike at the edge of the woods along a mossy forester's lane. he didn't dare cross into the trees, because his uncle had told him of bears. he and uncle once walked up from the meadows into the forest. the trail lead along narrow tracks deeper into a tall pinetree grove. as thick undergrowth begun to line the path on both sides, afternoon's light slowly faded. he was scared. he grabbed uncle's hand, wanting to turn back, down to the meadow. just then he heard a horrendously loud growl, a truly abhorrent snarl. uncle bragged back home that the boy had jumped seven feet. he found out much later that uncle had been in cahoots with his friend, the butcher's son. that always cocky boy needed a lesson. of course uncle never heard the end of this. much later he found his shoe wouldn't fit. a dead mouse found a toe hold and afterlife in the tip of his boot. the dog was blamed, but there were two who knew better.

his aunt showed him how to smoke cigarettes, helped raising a tent made of bedsheets and willow poles, which fell when the dachshund made off with a main stay. when it rained, or if he felt like it he stayed in bed reading. or wanting tea. he might sway from a swing hanging from rafters in the old hay-loft. he did as he pleased, much as his very strict holiday schedule called for. aunt called him a lebenskünstler, an artist of life.

the town of ulm was their turn-off from the autobahn, down and around to a two lane road heading south, narrowly twisting. a sudden hay wagon slowed the ride, but shifting twice they got by, though just barely. the sudden raw acceleration forced him against the back, gasping, but thrilled in the rush of blowing past. the rig's driver shook his fist at them, but he stuck his tongue out at this meandering hack. he was squealing as their motor revved high, the car cutting tight into a narrow turn. feigning now, he drove his own five-fifty spyder on the track, racing ferraris, his voice made raucous, make belief shifting gears, and screechingly braking, boosting his engine piercingly loud. high drama from back, inside his very own cockpit.

such bluster drove them batty up front.

stop it! stop it right now, as though he had put his toy gun to their forehead.

once a police car, flashing lights, stopped them. he slid from his den then, that very instant, pretending to sleep, lolling like an angel, snuggling his teddybear, sprawled out in the rear seat. this was only a traffic check. a madly speeding motorist had been observed, the constable noted. how could it have been them though, as they had been slowed, hadn't they, for some time at that, behind cows driven to pasture.

he then told the story they'd already heard a hundred times: how uncle got caught inside a herd of cows on his bike and how he had bumped himself on, from hind to hindquarter, nudging and pushing with one hand on some of those many rear ends, until, it had to happen, he pushed at a cow only to find his hand, then his forearm disappearing deep, than deeper into the animal's wide open rear. the cow lurched, as she would, tail straight up, uncle and bike in tow. they thought the story neither true nor very funny.

with the constable's help the herd moved finally into their pasture. the cowhand turned out a girl in a little skirt and black rubber boots, her ponytail swishing like a tail of one of her cows.

aunt paula's house was small. the factory, where tall machines pressed black powder into brown bakelite light-switches, and a small office were downstairs. to get upstairs you climbed a half-turn staircase for the kitchen, a bath, two bedrooms, a hay loft and a sunday room, where he slept on a sofa nearly long enough to stretch out. aunt paula and her husband, uncle otto, and gerd, their son, lived in this upstairs, together with a little german dachshund, who came around at night to bite toes, always making trouble, or barking at imaginary mice. there was a maid, ottilia, came up in the morning to work the household, she cooked and washed and cleaned, while his aunt was downstairs in the office doing the books, sending bills and keeping inventory straight. uncle otto dealt with the factory and smoked countless cigarettes. his girls, mostly locals, worked his huffing machines. the girls were farmer's daughters, done with milking cows and cleaning stables. uncle paid well, with vacation and work finished at four most afternoons. gerd was around. unless he was off in the woods with his fiancee, or made deliveries or one time fell off his bike trying to get past a herd of cows.

his beloved aunt had walked to the end of the village to roll out a "welcome to kirchberg" banner. with all the trouble he caused, he was her summer event and she, like him, couldn't wait for his holiday to begin. his favorite dish was warming in the oven, ottilia had rolled out the dough, paula mixed the filling, now he sat down and devoured those squares, crisped in brown butter, maultaschen they called this. his parents spent a night at the local mosquito hotel, they didn't sleep much, and drove back the next day. they had their own holiday for a while, until they came back to claim a son who couldn't be found. no one knew where he might be, clearly hiding, uncle saw him running away, but had no idea where to. while they searched, he had climbed back into his pit, back in the car, looking up through the glass, at summer clouds, already dreaming. it took paula's third instinct to spot him. they all cried good bye, he crawled out once more to give his aunt a hug made to last until next summer.

uncle otto called him his mother's son. he had given him ten marks to get stamps and mail a small package at the main post office a few miles away. he pedaled his aunt's bike there and found that the parcel cost only four marks to send. uncle had said to keep the balance, which meant he could buy a small cap gun and become billy the kid. uncle called him a spendthrift. but he shot his way through the barn chasing chickens, who took off squawking in terrified flight. the dachshund thought this a wholly new adventure, ran in crazed circles, barking madly. once out of ammo the kid played wild west for another day. then the gun without caps ended up in a box of uncle's utterly useless items, next to a zippo without flint wheel, a one arm scissor, a lone belt buckle, old wire rims missing a lens, a bell without clapper, many, many a screw, brassy and silver, a spool of pink threat. you never know, he would say. he was a fixer. his hands knew a sledgehammer as well as a micronometer. my aunt came to him, a small splinter under her red thumbnail and he pulled it with flat tweezers. he owned three cigarette lighters: a toujour'le, a peut-être'le and of course the jamais'le, that zippo had lost a flint wheel. he only spoke a certain kind of french. to keep the kid from further trouble he had him polish bakelite light-switches on a slow turning buff wheel, but the kid polished his fingernails instead. when he was to sweep the floor, he made like a witch on her broomstick. the girls thought this funny, and laughed, when uncle tried to catch him, and catch him he did, to give him a spanking. but only in jest. his aunt was sure of that.

they had only one phone and it was down in the office. a black heavy bakelite instrument to be used mostly for business. when his aunt needed my uncle and knew that he was with his fiancee, she could have called, instead she had him take her bike to fetch uncle from the other end of the village. he pedaled past the crossroads and out toward a house adjacent to woods. there he'd been told he'd find uncle, likely upstairs, but he'd better knock before walking in. he knocked on two doors with no answer, but thought he'd heard a moan from a door down the hall. uncle lay flat out in bed, toes in socks, pointing up. tony, the fiancee, midways on top, brightly naked. as she flustered a sheet, he thought her strong bouncy backside impressive. uncle's supposed to come home, he scarcely managed and ran.

blackberry brambles on the fence to the neighbor's house were regularly trimmed by a goat, but only on their side. over at paula's they grew luscious berries, which in late summer were warmed by afternoon's sun and tasted dark and juicy. he picked them hand to mouth.

blackberries were himalayan, his aunt explained. he had only a vague notion of the himalayas as a place very far away, with gigantic mountains, somewhere in asia, always in snow. hard to imagine these berries would grow where it was cold and icy and wintry all the time. uncle said that huddled between those massive mountains were mild valleys. the berries likely grew there, but let's look it up. a singular encyclopedia, stamped "brockhouse" in old gold was chained to its desk-stand down in the office. an altogether fat book, with many pages, each page fragile off delicate paper, kept open to the last search by a wide red ribbon. he had to wash his hands before he could turn any pages. especially after eating blackberries. it turned out that the berries were native to virtually anywhere, most often considered a pest. he couldn't believe, that a delicious berry like that could be a nuisance and began to doubt how resourceful this book might actually be. uncle thought him smart to doubt what was printed, even in the "brockhaus". but he had lost interest and ran off with his kite to the stubble fields, where two days ago wheat stood high, wavering, wielding to gusts like sudden whitecaps at sea. but for now the wind was steady, white clouds on the horizon ballooning, a breeze taking to the kite in no time. everyone knows the diamond kite. it appears in all skies and usually sits dull before a slow wind, dangling a long streamer to keep steady. once the kite lifted up, flying that is, it was tugging gently on the string uncle had supplied from an endless collection of twine. the clown-faced red diamond made a little dance dallying left to right and back, now dragging at the belly of its line. the wind culled a few leaves at first, but soon the line stiffened and the once smiling clown waned as a red diamond. the string stripped from the boy's fingers and snaked away on the ground. he tried to step on it, but with each step the tail slipped further until it raveled high in a bush, then a tree and in a far distant, the blustery sky.the boy didn't know yet he would fly kites at sheep's meadow, the place in new york where commissioner hoving had opened central park to kite festivals and music, nor, that he would build a tetrahedral kite like graham bell's, a flying pyramid almost too big to get through the front door. he did not know of a place called "go fly a kite" on third avenue, where an indian man named bahadur taught him to fly fighter kites twirling high into eighty-second street, past ginkgo trees and fire escapes. you have to know about fighters. they go where their nose points. always. if they are before a gust and you hold the string tight they go there fast. very fast. so, at carl schurz park, up where the mayor lives in gracie mansion, where old folk like to sit in the morning sun three stories up from the east river. the wind usually comes from the west, behind you and it is perfect to fly this kind of kite. string taut it will rush in a straight line down and out of site, way down to the river below, making the old folk rise from their benches, going "aw". you loosen the line now, twirling the kite, and nose up, line tight, he will rise straight like jesus from the grave. as they go "ah" the small diamond rises back into their view. if you know how you can go from "aw" to "ah" and back again, in a sharp spiffy. it does take some flying and a few kites drowned in the river.at that time he hadn't met the kite-man of nantucket, who built a kite flapping its wings, a look-alike blueeagle, flew far out over tuckernuck island scaring gulls into screaming banshees.

i found this image of the nantucket kite man on line. the blue eagle kite on top, as well as the bat with green eyes next to him, i flew many times. he also made me a very large delta kite, called a valkyrie. eight feet across at the span, sewn of red heavy cotton, steeply bridled it flew in a good wind virtually straight overhead. a kite overhead is no easy feat, but at least it hasn't the pull it might 70 degrees out. once i sat in a casually tied dinghy. the eagle flew with flapping wings, on a fifty pound line about two-hundred feet out, three quarters up from horizon, tied down to the bow. it slowly pulled my little boat away from ship. trying to rope the eagle down, it ditched in the bay, close enough to fetch. but with no oars on board, i found myself far and away, mid morning, full sun, no hat, scared and alone on chesapeake bay with a wet blue eagle kite. i was of course rescued, my ship's captain slow, but found me as a spot in his binoculars and sent a speed boat waterskiing my way. by then my kite had me half mile off shore.

die traurigen geranien, wolfgang borchert. my translation

wistful geranium

it was dark when first they met. then she invited him and now he was there. she showed him around in her apartment, and paraded the various tablecloths, and her bedding, as well as dinner plates and all the place settings she owned.

they sat face to face the first time in bright daylight; that's when he saw her nose.

he thought that her nose looked like someone had sewn it on. it doesn't even look like a regular nose, more like a strawberry. oh, for god's sake, he thought, just take a look at those nostrils. they are completely unbalanced, truly. there's no harmony between them. one is narrow and oval, while the other yaws just like an abyss. dark and round and deeply endless. he took out a kerchief and dabbed his forehead. it is so very warm in here, she began.

he agreed, but looked at her nose. that nose must have been sewn on, he thought again. it is completely bizarre in that face. it also has a complete different color than the rest of her skin. so much more intense. and those nostrils, well, they really are without any harmony. or possibly a strangely novel harmony, he thought to himself, like a picasso.

so, he began again, don't you think picasso points in the right way?

who? who is that, she asked, pi-ca---?

well clearly not, he sighed and than in a sudden disconnect: you must have had an accident, yes?

what do you mean, she asked.

well, he uttered helplessly.

oh, because of the nose?

well, yes, of course.

no, the nose was like that right from the start.

she added patiently, yes, right from the start.

i'll be damned! he almost voiced, but then only said: no, really?

and asides, she whispered, i am exceptionally harmonic as a person. and i adore symmetry so much, just look at both my geranium by the window. one on the right, the other on the left. completely symmetric. oh, no, you must believe me, inwardly i am totally different, completely different.

that's when she laid her hand on his knee and he felt the glow of her appallingly intimate eyes way in the back of his head.

she continued quietly and a little shyly: i'm quite sincere about marriage as well, and about living together.

because of the symmetry? he evinced.

harmony, she bettered him kindly, because of the harmony.

of course, he said, on account of the harmony.

he got up.

oh, do you have to leave?

well, yes, yes, i do.

she brought him to her door.

inwardly i am really so much different, she began once more once.

oh come on, he thought, your nose is a complete imposition. a sewed on imposition. but he said aloud: inwardly you're like your geraniums, that's what you wanted to say, completely symmetric.

then he stepped down and out, not once turning around.

she stood by the window, gazing after him. that's when she saw that he stopped downstairs to dabb his forehead again. what she couldn't see was his grin of relief. she couldn't because she was in tears. and her geranium were just as sad.at least they smelled that way.